With the ever-increasing demands for higher data transmission rates, there are ever-increasing demands from local area network (LAN) cable customers for high-speed data transmission characteristics. LAN cable customers are increasingly demanding assurance that LAN cables will perform at operational levels that equal or exceed certain transmission performance standards, such as transmission requirements for cables qualifying as Category 5, Category 5e or Category 6 cables under TIA/EIA-568A. LAN cables include twisted pair cables, coaxial cables and optical fiber cables.
Cable manufacturers may provide written performance test data with each batch or reel of cable. Unfortunately, this practice may increase costs to the cable manufacturers and may be somewhat time consuming. Moreover, written performance test data oftentimes becomes lost prior to or during installation. As such, cable customers oftentimes request the cable manufacturers to resend this data to them. This practice can be time consuming and can increase costs to cable manufacturers.